FatBlogger

Why do you live here?

Any Star Trek fans out there? Hmm, no Trekie/Treker dorks like me? Ok.

Star Trek is something that use to bind me and my son together, we both loved it. When I joined Netflix we began to get each disk in every series and it became the nightly routine to sit down together and watch an hour of Next Generation, Voyager or Deep Space Nine, each season, each episode in sequential order.

Sure, it is a bit nerdy, but no more so than soap operas, Survivor, Lost or Desperate Housewives. In fact ST is so much better, because each episode has a point to make, noble characters, a foundation of discipline, and a moral clarity based on the future not the past, something I found vital to raising a teen boy. But enough about all that, I am getting to the point.

About a 2 years or so ago we began the Deep Space Nine season, episode 1. The main character is Benjamin Sisko, who has previously lost his wife to a Borg attack, led by the converted Capt. Picard of the Enterprise. Sisko has now been reassigned to the Deep Space Station, with his teen age son, to guard the Bajoran planet from the Cardasians. Still with me? He does not want the assignment, and he resents Capt. Picard, who is now healthy and his superior, holding him responsible for the death of his wife.

While he is trying to find a way out of the assignment, he takes a shuttle craft and ends up sucked into a nearby worm hole, which it turns out is populated by aliens who exist without a time line and just happen to be the gods of the Bajorans. Sisko is transported back to that fateful day when the Borg attacked, and he could not save his wife. He keeps yelling for the aliens to take him away from that time, but they can't, because it is him who has brought them all there. They ask him, "Why do you choose to live here?"

In our more or less linear lives, we often "live in the past", maybe in a particular moment or even a particular year. Because life MUST move forward, we drag this "time" with us, like an anchor moored firmly into the past. The weight of these days makes living now difficult, sluggish, slow. It weighs heavily on our decisions, our actions, our goals, indeed our purpose in life. Inevitably we are "altered" in some way from the events of our past, but that does not mean that such events make us "unalterable".

Sisko realizes that he can live his life in the present, let go of his anger without letting go of the memory of his wife, and move forward more easily with his life and his son's. He takes the job and 7 great seasons later, becomes....well, I won't spoil it.

Our paths may be different today, but that does not mean that we need to drag that time with us today or tomorrow.  The knots that bind us may be secure, but they are also brittle with age, consistent wiggling will loosen them, and set us free.

I really need to get this into a fortune cookie. Why do you choose to live here? (in bed)

The first

day of the month is always a stressful time for me, as are holidays of any kind. I always feel like I should be "beginning" to change myself on these days. Here is the opportunity for a fresh start, and like usual, I mess it up, balk at it, or simply calculate another. There is something inherently wrong with using days like that for something other than what they are intended, it seems selfish.

To begin a diet, to "exercise" the demons that are within, well it is a significant event to me, it takes on the "weight" of change, like "now I have a chance to be me". It IS NOT about losing weight, it is about changing who I am. Such a heady event, such a thing so monumental to the outcome of my life, can not be begun in the middle of the month, or on a Tuesday, or some other nondescript day, it must be something that will be, to quote Shakespeare, Henry V, "remembered". I have even gone to such extents as to "use" full moons, new moons, birthdays, celestial events, and days based on how many days are left, like 50, 100, 200.

I might be "preparing" for such a day for weeks, psyching myself up for such a new beginning, but as the fateful day takes shape, my resolve and willpower diminishes. Before long I am eating a peanut-butter sandwich and writing the whole day , and perhaps the month, off. It use to cause me so much anxiety that I could not breathe, now I just shrug my shoulders.

I know, on the outside, if this is not part of your "habit" (and believe me, we all got them), it looks foolish. To throw away a whole month of work because of three days of a hurricane, or a Thanksgiving, is just stupid. 31-3=28 good solid days to reach your goals. But I can't just fall off the moving bus for three days and get back on, it is like trying to jump back on at 50 mph, difficult. Instead I look for the next stop, and sometimes that takes days, weeks, months, even years. My personal life is entirely about preparing for the day that I might get back on that bus.

The very worst of it is all the collateral damage it does to the rest of my life, the things I put off, or avoid, because I am not "on the path", or have not "begun" to be the "real" me. A lot of quotes to be sure. I can see it, I can see the ludicrousness of it, but I can't DO anything about it. I can't seem to stop this cycle from running (ruining) my life. It is frustrating, sad, stupid, silly. It makes no common sense, and I like common sense. I feel like I am the ONLY one who does this. I wish there was a group I could join. "Hi, I am am Bill W.  and I am a _____ (I don't even know what to call it).

I am not getting down on myself here, just relaying a simple truth about me, and rather indifferently I might add.

By any measure.....

There were some great comments from my last few posts, some good ideas and questions, and as I have become accustomed to, great support. I thought that I would address some of your comments this fine Sunday morning!

Most of my life I have struggled with weight. I would say that it became a problem for me as a teen, and as I look at those pictures I must assume that I had a mental problem because I was not fat. My son is 14, not fat at all, and he says the same thing now and it gives me the shivers. Is this a typical teen thing that can go awry if fed by the wrong conditions ( a case like mine) or is this something I transferred to him. I NEVER get on his case about his weight or anything like that, but I do nag him occasionally about his choices, hey once in a while you have to eat something that was growing instead of processed!

I weigh 225 pounds and my body fat is around 33 percent, these numbers go up a down a bit by a pound and percent or two. I know the body fat percentage because I was annal enough to buy a dual weight and body fat scale a few years ago.

Some of you have suggested that it does not sound like a lot of weight, you expected me to be 300+ pounds or more. I understand this, I mean with all my bitching about it in the past you would have thought that I was the fat man in the circus. 225 is not so large by societies standards today I guess, since the majority of Americans are overweight now we look at the morbidly obese as challenged as opposed to simply the obese or overweight. According to the charts, for my height at 5' 9", I am supposed to be in the 150 - 160 range and 225 classifies me as officially "obese" because my Body Mass Ratio (BMI) is in the 30's. I have only been lower than 165 twice, once when I was growing up, and once when I was 21 and I had dieted to the extreme. Weighing in my 160's is a struggle for me, it is too thin for me and my muscle structure, so I know that really I am in the 170 range. That is still technically overweight, but is more reasonable and realistic for me, the charts are not always right for everyone.

I think you would look at me and think, "well, he is overweight, but certainly not obese". I have a large frame, but refuse to use the words "big boned"! I have a body that is more like a rugby player's than a marathon runner's. I am short but strong, my legs are not fat but they are muscular and large, as is my upper torso and shoulders.  I suppose the best way to put it is I look like an aging athlete you just let things go.

So, some of you might be right, what is the big deal! Because I work out some what regularly, with a month off here and there, I have maintained some good muscle tone over the years. But still, 50+ pounds overweight is considerable. If you doubt this, go to the grocery store and lift a 50 pound bag of water softener pellets. It is heavy, and to think of this extra weight being carted around by your heart, lungs and joints is jarring symbolism and a pretty good wake up call.

Yes, my total cholesterol is 250+, but my triglycerides were high because of the exercise and my blood sugar so far is fine.  I just worry about the "tipping point", and what that is. If I actually knew that however, I would push it that far, so its best if I don't!

My measurements have been a huge shock to me recently though. I have gone from a 34, to a 36, to a 38 and just last week when I went shopping for new pants for Las Vegas, a 40 size waist! I have never had a 40 sized waist before. All of a sudden my belly and middle just got bigger while the rest of me stayed the same. Usually I gain weight all over, which helped to create the illusion that I was not that fat. Not anymore. For some strange reason, my gut gave way and now I am a 40 size waist, and it feels like it happened over night, or at least over the last month, the same month that I became more sporadic in my exercise. I think the levees have broken.

All in all, things could be worse. I am disappointed in the way things have worked out over the last few months, disappointed in the end results, disappointed in my self discipline. However, I am not depressed, and I am not with out options. By any standards of measurement, I am over weight, but for what ever reason, even in the face of the fact that I am LARGER than I was when I started, I no longer define myself by my fat or my body.

Perhaps that is the very best that I could have hoped for...and by any measure... the real beginning to a more healthy life.

re-focusing

The long and sobering look at my weight and fitness goals took longer than I expected. Not so much because I was immersed in detail and thought, more like I was avoiding it. Stepping on the scale the day after my last post revealed a weight gain of five pounds.  I don't care so much about that except for this depressing, glaring fact;

I started this blog in April, a solid 6 months ago, and to date have lost no net weight what so ever.

Armed with that fact I am forced to acknowledge the inevitable, that I simply can not be in this half marathon in a few weeks.  So, I have 20 weeks of training that amounted to basically nothing.

Two steps forward, two back, two forward, two back on so on and so on and so on...this is no way to travel.

One of the main reasons I wanted to be in the marathon was because I thought it would help me to lose weight for my trip back home this Christmas. I was excited to think that I could return to family and friends and not be so fat. Now with Christmas just over 2 months away, and the fact that I have lost nothing in 6 months, that does not seem possible either.

I should be depressed. I have been many times over the last 6 months when set backs and sliding have occurred, but strangely I am not. In fact, I seemed to have stop caring about losing weight about the same time the hurricanes came, for reasons I don't know. While at the outset this seems like progress because the obsessing has receded; my mental health has probably improved, but my physical health is still in very real danger. Diabetes runs in my family and my cholesterol is above 250.

The vanity and the bullshit and the obsessions seemed to have faded, like many of my anxieties over time, but health troubles down the road loom "large". There must be a way to make improvements, to take a less troubled but more healthy road, but because of my history and habits, it is a path well hidden. Yet I know it is there. I am confident I will find it. Why should I be? Good question.

I don't really have a reason to be so confident in success, surely I have not achieved it much, nor do I have the experience to know what it means or feels like. But something strange happened to me over the last two months, something that makes many of the things in my past seem to "make sense", if that even makes sense. There is something more important that I must do,  something more meaningful and more profound than my own health, and my own health is only a means to an end, something to improve, to make the purpose of my life more probable.

The best way I can describe this is like looking through a pair of binoculars or focusing a lens of a camera. When you want to see something close up it blurs the bigger picture, and when you want to focus on the bigger picture, things near to you become out of focus. I seem to have changed my focus from one thing to another, and the transition has left me in a kind of limbo.

So, though I do not know how yet, I know it is going to happen... simply because it has to.

How do people change?

I suppose the short answer is they don't, or very rarely. I suppose real change comes about mostly through desperation, an either or proposition that is forced upon you. Do this or you will die, physically, mentally, spiritually.

I think many, like me, live their lives on a path not of their own choosing, something cleared for them by their parents or environment or society. For many, this path is not adequate for a healthy life, but it becomes safe, comfortable, doable. To get off that path, to make your own with out threat of dying some kind of death, is exceedingly difficult, at least I have found it so. The routine becomes as hard to break as concrete, and the daily, chip, chip, chip with a little pick seems pointless.

Yet, there is that hope that what you are doing might crack the surface, break yourself wide open, destroy the mold that made you.

Is all that really necessary? Is this self consternation, angst, in some cases loathing, deserved? How many of us tilt at windmills when we don't have to? How many of us react to ourselves negatively simply because we believe that some amount of "fixing" means we can make our selves "right"? Or simply because we were told to, shamed to, by someone we trusted more than ourselves? Many I think.

Still, even stopping that requires changing right? It is inevitable, like the chrysalis of youth, it is something that must be gone through, endured, the lake of fire that tempers the holy parts of us. Everyone, it seems, faces some such challenge in their lives, something that forges their metal, their steel, everyone. It truly, I believe, is the course of all our lives, all our stories, all our tales, from the beginning of the written and spoken word and most likely before that. We all face a challenge, a confrontation of ourselves, or we all die a slow death of a purposeless life. The challenge is not the purpose, the challenge only reveals the purpose. That is what I believe anyway.

So, to some degree, we all must change. Out bodies of youth sprout up reaching ever higher, and when that stops, what then? Do we continue to stretch out and up in ways unmeasurable, or do we stop, become stunted, wither.

I think a lot of our lives, at least mine anyway, is spent trying to avoid this change, or trying to avoid the result of what that change would reveal. We find distractions, things to "bide" our time, things that can kill us or come damn close, or things that are much more muted, accepted, mundane. Bonnie Friedman, in her elegant book Writing Past Dark, told a personal tale of becoming obsessed swatting flies in order to avoid the fear and judgment of writing her novel. Distraction, obsession, severe or benign it seems, is common to many.

Quite often, overcoming the challenge before you means accepting the obstacle before you. Either way, one must move through it, move around it or move with it, but one must move.

I sometimes think of my life as a huge immovable train, just sitting at the station. Each day another boxcar is added, another bad habit, another "should", maybe another "to do", in short, the demands of life. The engine will not budge; the trip ahead is long, arduous, a track with no end, and the length of the train has become too heavy, particularly the caboose! What incentive is there to break that inertia and move that caboose? I suppose only the thought of places yet unseen and the notion that once moving, such a force would be hard to stop.

So this is my dilemma; to give up what has become my accepted negatives when I clearly don't have to, don't need to, just want to.  This kind of thing does not require courage, only the strength to push through the initial pain, the stamina to endure, the will to accept being uncomfortable. All of that in exchange for the challenge of the unknown, a journey wide and wonderful, and a reward of a purposeful life.  Hmmm. Seems like a reasonable deal to me.

Hey, what do you want?!  It's Sunday and that generally means another rendition of overly dramatic events, random contemplations and meanderings of the cake filled mind!

Choo Choo! All aboard! The FatBlogger Express is now leaving the station!

Is being fat sinful?

Lately I have been thinking that being fat is immoral. Now there are many of you who would immediately say that I am beating myself up or denigrating others over-weight, but it is not like that, just a curiosity, a notion, a thought really. Medical or psychological issues aside, is being overweight by choice and lifestyle...sinful?

My thinking goes something along the lines that taking more than you have a right to is not honorable. Maybe that is a socialist concept, certainly not an American one. My experience of American life has been that you have a right to take all that you want, as much as you want, provided you "own" it. This is the basis of a capitalistic system, one designed around the survival of the fittest, where what is "fittest"  is set by the society at large and those with the power. Certainly that is not just an American thing, but it is one we excel at, it is no small coincidence that America is the fattest country in the world. It could be only that we have plenty, so we use and abuse plenty.  Manifest Destiny baby.

Suppose we take it to the next level, suppose everyone in America (we are 2/3 there now), or any country really for that matter, was over-weight, what kind of effect would that have on the world? It would require more food manufacturing, more processing plants, more farm land, more fertilizer seeping into the water table, more pollutants pumped into the sky as the cogs of machinery churned out more and more Cheetos. Somehow that just doesn't seem right!

We live in a society of mixed messages though, because we also have the American Spirit, sharing, giving, generous. To help others is good, to help those down and out is worthy, to offer a second chance decent, to split your bread in half for someone who is hungry a sign of faith. If all of America was fit, would it translate into a less hungry world or simply more layoffs at restaurants and groceries stores?

We make more, we eat more, we spend more, we waste more, we give more. Confusing... like an obese Sally Struthers pleading for others to feed emaciated children at her feet.

Still the thought persist for me, regardless of what goes on in a society, on a more human or spiritual level, is it morally OK to be fat? I suppose putting a "ONE" logo on a blog about overeating is, at best, an oxymoron, and that is probably what got me to thinking about it.  Perhaps the notion was implanted at a much earlier age, with books like Diet for a Small Planet.  Perhaps even earlier, as a student at Sacred Heart Catholic School in south Chicago, with tales of multiplying fish for the masses. Or maybe it was learning to embrace yoga and it's teachings of a simpler, minimalist life style.  If I take more than my share am I doing someone harm somewhere? I think, on a purely purist level, sure, yes... I am.

The end result of my query will probably merely be more guilt as I enter the pantry. There is the outside chance however, that it could signal the beginnings of moderation and a lifestyle a bit more...responsible. Who knows.

analogies defined

It's funny I think, or I should say, the way I think. How I like to put things into analogies, to "see" something as it relates to the physical world, my own illustrated life. My analogy about the crucible is interesting because in a way I have put into an image the very problem without realizing it. The issue is not what stops me from pouring myself into the crucible, it is the issue of why I believe there is a crucible at all? Why do I think that a living, growing, linear life becomes something cast into one shape, inert, unfeeling and can not be re-made or changed unless completely melted down. Interesting.

A more healthy analogy might be that of a tree, perhaps immobile and rooted in one place, but still striving to survive, still reaching ever upward. Perhaps the growth of this "tree" is limited by space, by lack of nourishment, by the quality of the air, but it is not really waiting, it is not really cast in stone (or iron), it is moving all the time making mistakes, re-grouping, changing...living.

Humans move, we move all the time. I think if we are not moving forward we feel like we are stagnant, still, a limited failure. We have to move, we have to "do", or we can not define who we are as individuals, or even how we fit into a society or culture.  I am moving too, I am walking in place, contemplating, thinking, brooding, afraid. I fear that making that journey will define me, like iron, and make me into something that I can not change. I can not risk that, so I keep walking in place. The thinking, the self analysis, it keeps me sane, it keeps me believing that I have a "plan" to move forward. It's just busy work. To many of you out there I am constantly repeating myself, but to me it is an ever shifting land mass of sand, always different with each days tide.

My circular path is well worn, thus safe. The chemical and electrical stimuli well ingrained in my brain to respond the same each time. Even in the brightest of daylight, a step into the unknown brings instant darkness, as if all the world just shuts off into a void, waiting for my perfections or imperfections to set fate onto it's new course. Too much, overload, I draw back. Better to think it over than to take-that-step. The muscles that I need have atrophied, and the convictions of my plans lake the courage to thrive.

Like that tree, I need a little pruning.

the maine thing is...

It has become my tradition, short and small as it is, to  introduce new friends as I put them on Pork Fried. Please welcome Michelle, author of A Flying Leap! She is a fellow Texan, though I can't really call myself that as I have only been here for 3 years. She writes powerful personable posts (hows that for alliteration?), that I have no doubt will end up at Barnes & Noble someday!

OK, on with the show...

WARNING! The following post is more of the same self serving crap I have been dishing out for the last few days. Demolition and construction ahead, watch for falling rubble!

Now, about that "one time" I have referred to in yesterdays post, where I had achieved (or I should say it was granted me) self acceptance without losing a pound. It involves Maine. I had dropped out of college in disgrace (see "history lessons suck", if you are interested) My father was getting transferred from Indiana to Massachusetts, so I tagged along. I was was living at their new home, reclusive and thinking I was too fat to do anything, public. I was lonely.

One day, out of the blue, I decided to take a ride up the coast, just drive for an afternoon as far as I could. I ended up in Maine during a crisp autumn day. I had never been there before, and being there on my own, exploring uncharted lands (at least for me) was thrilling. I parked in different towns along the coast, walked around shops and the beach. Something inside me began to feel "it" was going to be all right. Something made me feel like where I was right now, is a place I had always wanted to be and I was not sure if that was physical, like the state, or metaphysical, like my place in the universe, they seemed the same just then. The air filled my lungs with hope, it was clear, full of truth and honesty. I was home. I bought a cheap t-shirt at a road side cart, blue-green, with big white letters - "Maine". Although I can't fit in it anymore, I still have it, all these years later, in the bottom of my dresser drawer.

When I got back to my parents house, I immediately felt sad again, claustrophobic. I wanted to move out desperately, but couldn't. I had a job, I probably could have moved out. I think I really did not want to leave my mother and little sister to fend for themselves. I stayed.

But the effects of being in Maine lasted awhile. I began to feel that I was OK, somewhere in the center of me, I could recognize myself. For that brief time, there was no "future" me to wish for, no "fat" me to hate. I accepted myself, for the first time, as is, flawed and imperfect. I started to go running again, something I really enjoyed. I began to lose weight with out really trying, not because I was excluding foods, just not overeating them. Something inside me had clicked, I was beginning to feel normal.

I am not sure what eventually ruined it all, or returned me to my usual "state". Maybe it was a particularly virulent year with my father, he was nearing rock bottom. Maybe it was just the daily grind, taking a small piece out of me everyday. Maybe it was the slow and painful realization that I was never going to get out of this place, physically and metaphysically.

Now, I loved other parts of New England, I adored the city of Boston, I enjoyed going to the museums and many parks in the city, but to this very day when somebody asks me where I would go if I won the lottery, it is an easy answer, Maine. It doesn't matter how, the proverbial log cabin or a trailer, locked in solitude in the middle of the woods, something small on a lake, near a mountain I can hike, at the beach where the jagged rocks reach into the cold, cold sea.

I don't know what it was that made me feel whole with out having to "earn" it. I don't know if it was the state, or a state of mind. Don't know why, don't know that I have to know why... it just is. I guess it is one of those things that resonates with you, with out reason or explanation, and the more you try to figure it out, the less it feels like a part of you.

So why am I living in Houston? (long story, another post entirely!) Or even more to the point, why am I living "here", again,  you know what I mean?

roller coaster

Well, the posts are coming fast and furious now, as I try to neatly bundle up my life, rearrange the furniture in an otherwise drab and dreary living room. Drinking 6 cups of Cuban coffee doesn't help much, or does, depending on how you look at it. Unfortunately because of this self involved indulgence I have not always been checking the blogs I like to read or arriving late to the party (you know, when the hostess has out the garbage bag and is emptying ashtrays, it's time to go home).

So much other crap is going on in the world right now, hell right here in our Senate, it makes me think that my own problems are so very stupid and insignificant. In the broader scope of things, of course they are, but in the context of my life, they are a butt plug I can not remove! ( I have no idea what that is or how to use it, I am not some kind of pre-vert, I just think anytime you get the opportunity to put the words butt and plug together you should seize it). Sometimes I feel envious of those who have more general type blogs, able to talk about all the things in their life, not just ONE BIG ISSUE. Maybe, if and when this passes from me like bad Mexican food (another butt reference, where am I going with this?), I might open up a new shop, something a bit more generalized..how about SpatBlogger?

Anyway...

Weighed myself today. Probably not a very good idea considering my mood and all. To my surprise, depression and confusion has not translated to a major weight gain, still hovering around the same place. I mentioned in yesterdays diatribe that I might talk about my successes, so I gave it some thought, actually took notes about them. I think it is relatively easy to point out the failures (and flailing) but maybe looking at what worked in the past, and why I went back, might actually be more informative.

To date, I have actually been happy with my weight, liking my body image and confident, about 7 times in the last 25 years. That comes to an average of feeling good about myself about once every 3 1/2 years! Now some of these times it was only briefly, like a month and sometimes it lasted much "longer" like a season, but in-between, generally a miserable experience. If I was to add up the actual time spent feeling that I liked myself and who I was, it would amount to about 2 out of the 25 years. So, that means I hate myself, or have hated myself, over 90% of the time! (God, I don't know whether I love numbers or despise them)

That just seems so very sad to me. It seems so very hurtful to have done that to myself, looking at that kind of past, the wreckage of all those "lost"days, I wonder if I can ever recover them, or make any use of what time I have left.

OK, so what did I do to deserve those 7  "good times"? With the exception of one of them, I lost weight, about 20-40 pounds each time. That would mean that I have already lost about 200 pounds of fat! (more numbers).

During these times, or at least when I had achieved my goal and was basking in the brief aftermath of accomplishment, I actually lived my life. I went out on dates, I pursued my career, I generally patched things up and did all the things I had been building up behind the dam (see "the dam of all things"). These were glorious and heady times, full of life, mirth and accomplishment! At least that's how my memory sees it anyway. If I felt so good, if I really liked who I was and what I had achieved, why did I go back? What would I throw it all away for a Ding Dong? What happened?

(splash of color inserted here to break up monotonous dialog)

Well, in each case (except for one, which I will get to later), I gained the weight back. I went "off" the routine of the diet and had no real goals, plans, anything, on the maintaining of it. Typically, once the goal was achieved, I binged on everything I had excluded, felt just awful and guilty, and fell down the slippery slope once again, each time finding it harder and harder to re-climb. I guess the question is, did I fall back because I did not have a "plan" on how to manage the after part of my goals, or did I do it on purpose, because now, having achieved the glorious task, I would be compelled to perform all the things that I had held off on? I would have to start making real choices, ones that involved "know thyself", identity, self-trust, things that would have to involve the possibility of failing?

Probably both. I think on a everyday conscious level, I did not go on any realistic type diets, they were all rather drastic, noting that the ones that were not, actually had longer lasting effects. But in each case, I had no plan, gave no thought anyway, as to what I would do after I reached the goal. I put it off, thinking I could worry about that later, and when later came, it was to late, guilt and self loathing had already filled the vacuum.

On an unconscious level, I think most definitely I was afraid. Being a perfectionist, and a very insecure person, I would now be required to perform every task perfectly. Whereas, when I was fat, I could blame my failures on my fatness, and I did not care, it was a shield. To lose the shield meant to take risks, be exposed. A terrifying thought. I was probably fearful to lose the only true friend and comfort I had ever known as well. Food was always there, non-judging, just wanting to please, if but for a moment. If I could put put together enough of these "moments", I might actually feel safe, secure. Something I never felt growing up.

There is also the sheer magnitude of the habit itself. Just repeating something over and over and over, no matter how harmful or denigrating it may be, is addictive. We are creatures of habit after all, often following a very worn, even unsafe path, though life.

So, in falling after reaching the goal, I have done so because of:

1) Poor maintenance planning.

2) An unconscious fear of losing a comforting "friend" and shield against rejection.

3) The overwhelming habit of many years.

Have I left anything out? Why else do people fall back and keep doing the same old nasty things they hate about themselves?

I feel like I am only re-hashing something I have gone over and over in my mind many times, I may have even done this in an earlier post...sorry. I guess for whatever reason, I am a linear type person, I have to lay things "out there" in an orderly, logical, step by step fashion (which may also be a sign of OCD). I guess I think, if I am going to rip my guts out, I may as well lay them out neatly to see exactly what I have right?

I mentioned that there was "one time" that I liked myself and who I was, without losing a single pound. I just can't go into that now, to tired of tip tapping away! I am going to take a break, eat some noodles, watch a little c-span. If you got this far, you have the patience of a saint, there may also be a little something weird about you...but that's why I like you so much!

a compass, a direction, a goal

Today did not start out all that well. Problems at home circumvented my own and made them seem silly and irrelevant. Despite that though, I can't help but think that they are all related, linked together by some common thread. Perhaps this is just me and my insecurities thinking that I am responsible for all the worlds ills, but there may be more to it then that. My own problems seem to be a kind of microcosm to what is going on with  my family, in particular my child. My problems has been a stone, thrown into the lake, and it's ripples have touched everyone I know. I suppose that is just life, for good or bad, we can't stop the interconnection of our lives.

It puts expediency into my situation though, it has to be resolved now.

When I last posted, I felt that I had achieved great insight, enough to avoid common, recurring patterns of my own self destruction. I felt as though I had the tools to rebuild my "ship", only I was lacking a compass to point the way.

But a compass does not point the way, it only gives you a reference for where north is, you still must choose your own direction. What is north for me? What is home?

This is critical. Without direction I will wander aimlessly from place to place, not just physically but mentally, spiritually, socially. Lacking a direction only invites aimless wandering, which in itself can reveal much about a person, but more than likely will only get you lost.

Let me try to put this another way. I suppose a direction is really only a goal, I need a goal.

Is the goal a simple matter like my weight, a number to strive for? Or something more, something larger? I mean, we have many goals in life, many without even knowing or planning them. Do I set a grand goal, something to be achieved in my lifetime, or a smaller goal, a milestone along the trip?

Knowing what is "north" for me must be something I can depend on, something I know will always be there for me. Knowing my direction or goal must be something I can realistically achieve, something worth the trip, something with benefits, rewards.

This has been difficult, I have been thinking about it off and on most of the day and into tonight. The hardest part has been on identifying what is my guiding star, what is "north" on my compass. A person has their own life to live, and often moves on with it in a different direction. A value? A virtue? A practice? A belief? A god? Something I have even naked and alone?

Do you believe in synchronicity? Karma? coincidence? Tonight we ordered Chinese food. Later, while I was debating with my conundrum, I grabbed my fortune cookie

                                                         Your family      

                                      is one of nature's masterpieces